‘Guardians Of The Galaxy’ Spotlight: Star-Lord

With ‘Guardians of the Galaxy‘ on their way to save the Marvel Universe on a cosmic level on August 1st of 2014, we felt that we should sit down and really introduce you to this ragtag team of cosmic heroes. While ‘The Avengers‘ are clearly the go to hero team in Marvel, there are quite a few others out there. The X-Men, The Defenders, and in space where no one can hear you scream we have the ‘Guardians of the Galaxy’. The ‘Guardians’ are not just ‘The Avengers’ in space as they have an entirely different team and set of goals. Speaking of this team, it’s led by Peter Quill who is also known as Star-Lord. While not originally intended to be, he’s ended up being a mixture of the nobleness of ‘Captain America‘, though you’d be hard pressed to get him to admit that, with twice the ego of ‘Iron Man‘. In the film, Marvel has cast Chris Pratt (‘Wanted’, ‘Jurassic World’) in the role and he’s definitely a good pick for playing such a cocky and charismatic character. So let’s delve into the man behind the mask and get to know who and what Peter Quill really is.

Origin:

Peter Quill has had a couple of origin stories at this point ranging from an alignment of celestial bodies to being the result of a tryst with a human woman by an alien. That second one is the one that is currently valid, and I suspect that will be used in the film. It goes a little something like this: J’son, a warrior of the Spartax Empire crashes on Earth and has an affair with a woman named Meredith. After he is able to fix his ship, he leaves her pregnant and with his gun. Years later an alien race known as the Badoon come to kill him and his mother. While she is killed, they believe they are successful when they destroy the house though Peter was able to escape. He eventually makes his way off the world and into the Universe and never looks back. He goes on to find out his father has become ruler of the Spartax Empire and, needless to say, the two don’t see eye to eye.

Star-Lord, himself, doesn’t have any special powers but initially had a suit that augmented his physical strength and durability. Later in life after his suit is destroyed he gets cybernetic implants which gave him 100% total recall and allowed him to see all forms of the energy spectrum. When those were eventually removed, he ended up with a Kree issued heat-dampening-espionage-battle suit that he still wears today: a battle helmet, and a universal translator. The helmet allows for having a system to do on-hand analyses at all times, which can be deadly combined with his already heightened tactical genius. It also improves his vision and allows him to breath while in space. A lot of useful items, but he’s more known for guns and explosives over any other powers.

Shining Moment on the Page:

As Peter Quill has been in space most of his life, he’s been involved in quite a few of the cosmic events that have occurred in the Marvel Universe. from fighting a former Herald of Galactus, the Fallen One, to acting as a military to the Kree general Ronan the Accuser (who happens to be in the ‘Guardians of the Galaxy’ movie). He was also transferred into the future during the ‘War of Kings’ and came back in time to prevent ‘The Fault’ from destroying all of creation. Yes, the man has been involved in quite a few events. Most recently, he’s been seen having the Guardians help out The Avengers in stopping Thanos’ forces once again from destroying Earth during ‘Infinity’.

Still, there is a tie for his 2 most memorable moments. Both occured in the ‘Annihilation’ story line that took place in 2006. Peter Quill was always on the side of good, but initially he helped Thanos who was apparently trying to do good in defeating the Beyonder. More importantly, he helped Nova defeat Annihilus and plan the attacks against Thanos who turned back to his own selfish ways. Wait. Thanos ended up betraying the good guys?

His successes here not only cemented him in a leadership role in Marvel, but almost most of his current version of the ‘Guardians of the Galaxy’ ended up working together in this event. Of course, while still in charge of the Guardians, he had disappeared for a little while and still hasn’t been given an explanation of how he came back.

From where? Well, Peter’s absolute most shining moment is when he supposedly sacrificed his own life to trap Thanos in the Cancerverse during ‘The Thanos Imperative’.

That didn’t stop the two of them from coming back though as Thanos has been wrecking havoc in the recent ‘Infinity’ story line and Peter is back in charge of the ‘Guardians of the Galaxy’. There’s no word on how the two both managed to come back and how Quill ended up alive, but the two appear to have come to an understanding that we haven’t yet been made privy to.

We’re going to be getting an interesting character who is not your typical hero in the next year and it’ll be interesting to see how Pratt is able to play him on screen. I’m also curious as if he’ll find a way to one up Robert Downey Jr‘s portrayal of Tony Stark, though I think that is one performance that will be tough to beat.

Stuart Conover

Stuart Conover is a father, husband, blogger, published author, geek, entrepreneur, editor of Horror Tree, horror fanatic, science fiction junkie, lives in a world of comics, and a casual gamer (all of this when his wife lets him of course.) He fell in love with science fiction and horror at the same time while watching the movie Alien at probably far too young of an age while still being extremely impressionable and has been happily obsessed with both since! Around the same time, he had also developed an unhealthy addiction to comic books that continues to this day!Want to talk about anything geeky? Reach out on Twitter - @StuartConover